“Man, I’ve missed you, Quen. You have no idea.”
Disgusted at his gullibility, Daniel bent to retrieve the lily bouquet. Blinking, he froze. There was a tiny, glowing woman standing in the petals, her hands orange with the pollen. “Holy shit!” he shouted, jerking his hand back.
The little woman looked up at him in shock, her gossamer wings a blur. “Son of a bitch!” she swore, her high voice clear among the crickets. And then she was gone, nothing but a silver trace of fading dust arching up into the rafters to say she’d ever existed.
“Did you hear—” Trisk said, but Daniel was staring at the eaves of the building, his heart pounding.
“Stay here,” Quen said, a dangerous edge to his voice. “Someone is outside.”
“It sounded like Daniel. Quen, wait!” she shouted, and then the door was yanked open, flooding the porch with a yellow light. “You don’t know how much he heard!”
Shocked into motion, Daniel vaulted over the railing, landing badly and rolling down to the cars. Quen’s Camaro still ticked with heat, and he scrambled up, dusty and disheveled. He turned to see Quen and Trisk silhouetted at the top of the porch stairs. Trisk was holding Quen’s arm as if to stop him. He couldn’t see their expressions with the light behind them, but Quen’s stiff body language said it all. Daniel was up shit creek without a paddle.
Mouth dry, he dropped the flowers. “I, ah . . . I didn’t hear anything,” he said.
Quen slumped as he pulled away from Trisk. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I’ll make it painless.”
“What? Quen!” Trisk shouted, rounding on him. “No!”
Painless! Daniel thought. My God, they were going to kill him. Hand up, he backed up into the Camaro. “I didn’t see anything!” he said, and then his jaw dropped as that same eerie glow he’d seen about that tiny woman seemed to blossom in Quen’s hands.
“In es est,” Quen said in regret, shoving it at him as if it were a dodgeball.
“I said no!” Trisk exclaimed, expression angry. “Finire!” she shouted, and Daniel stood transfixed as Trisk threw a second gold-and-green ball of light at the one streaking toward him. The two met with a ping he felt more than heard, and Daniel jumped, the sensation of having been pushed back filling him when the globes of light deflected to hit the earth to either side of him. The packed dirt spurted with an odd wet hiss, falling back to make a glowing crater.
Daniel’s jaw dropped, gaze darting from them to the green haze and back again. “Y-you . . .” he stammered. “Who are you people?”
“You’re not killing him,” Trisk said, and Daniel froze. She was a spy. They both were.
“He heard everything,” Quen protested as Trisk hustled down the stairs, shooting dark looks at Quen, tight behind her. “We can’t let him break the silence.”
“Yeah?” She stopped at the foot of the stairs, jerking Quen to a halt beside her. “He didn’t break the silence, you did. So what if he heard us talking about Kal?”
Quen’s fists slowly opened, his angry expression replaced by one of dismay.
Seeing it, Trisk nodded, her lips pressed tight. “This. Was. Salvageable,” she said softly, poking him in the chest with a finger. “Until you went ape and threw a lethal spell at him. Good God, what have you been doing the last three years?”
Quen flushed. “Security.”
“I can tell,” she said sourly, then forced a sick-looking smile onto her face as she turned to Daniel. “It’s going to be okay.”
But it didn’t feel like it as Daniel swallowed hard, the warm engine of the Camaro pressing into him. The keys were in the ignition. “I—I won’t say anything,” he stammered, but his thoughts kept returning to that tiny woman and the glow from her. It had been the same glow in Trisk’s hand.
A memory slowly began to push aside the fear. Finire. He’d heard that odd word before. As Trisk and Quen argued, Daniel touched the back of his head, his eyes narrowing at the remembered bump from two weeks ago.
“There was a man,” Daniel said, and Quen’s forceful argument about what to do stopped as they both turned to him. “In a crushed green velvet coat. In Angie’s old office.” His lips parted. “Blue glasses, ugly laugh. You threw me across the room without using your hands.” Daniel stiffened. “How could I forget that?”
“How indeed,” Quen accused, and Trisk flushed.
“Uh, I was going to tell you about that,” she said to Quen, her shoulders hunched in embarrassment. “I found a stone in my grandmother’s ashes with a name engraved on it.”
“Trisk,” Quen said, aghast.
“Daniel walked in on us,” she continued, gesturing weakly.
“You didn’t lock the door? Isn’t that rule one in summoning demons?” Quen berated her, and Daniel started. Demons?